ISTANBUL (AFP) – A Turkish prosecutor has charged nine people over two deadly bomb blasts in Istanbul in July that claimed 17 lives and were blamed on separatist Kurdish rebels, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. Two of the suspects, alleged members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), risk life sentences without parole for their role in carrying out the attacks in a crowded Istanbul street, Anatolia said. The two are accused of acting as watchmen while a fellow militant planted and detonated the bombs, it said, adding that the police were still looking for the unidentified third suspect. The remaining seven defendants risk sentences of between seven and 45 years in prison on charges of possessing explosives, bomb making and belonging to the PKK, the report said. It was not immediately clear when the trial will begin. The bombs were planted in a crowded pedestrian street in the residential district of Gungoren and detonated by mobile telephone.

LJUBLJANA (AP) – Slovenia says it will oppose further European Union membership negotiations with Croatia due to a border dispute, effectively impeding its neighbor from joining the EU. The two countries have argued over the drawing of sea boundaries and ownership of four villages and a hill. Croatia is due to start another round of EU accession talks tomorrow, in time to complete them next year. It was to talk about harmonizing its laws with the EU’s in 10 key policy areas. But EU member Slovenia says that Croatia has submitted documents for the talks that include maps with the boundary marked in a way that it disputes. Prime Minister Borut Pahor said yesterday those policy areas will have to remain on ice.

SOFIA (AP) – Bulgaria’s last 155 troops stationed in Iraq have returned home. The soldiers had been stationed in a camp near Baghdad where they were handling the security of detainees. Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev participated yesterday in a homecoming ceremony at Sofia International Airport. He said that the Iraq mission, to which Bulgaria sent troops in 2003, had been a challenge for the country’s army. Thirteen Bulgarian soldiers and six civilians have died in Iraq since 2003. Bulgaria also has troops in international military missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia.

The 11 crew of a Turkish cargo ship captured by Somali pirates off the Gulf of Aden are safe and sound, the Turkish firm that owns the vessel said yesterday. Three of the 11 crew members of the Bosporus Prodigy are Turkish nationals, Isko Maritime said in a statement to AFP. The remaining eight are Ukrainian, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin, who called for greater international cooperation to fight the growing piracy threat in the region. (AFP)

Heirs of Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu will get back artworks, including engravings by Spanish master Francisco Goya, that were seized by the state 19 years ago, a court ruled yesterday. Ceausescu’s fortune, never officially evaluated, was ordered confiscated by a military court, which sentenced him and his wife Elena to death by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989, after they tried unsuccessfully to flee the revolution that toppled them. The decision by the Bucharest Court of Appeals is final, Haralambie Voicilas, a lawyer representing Ceausescu’s son Valentin, told Reuters. (Reuters)

A group of Croatian children were hospitalized with smoke inhalation that they suffered during a theater play after a faulty fireworks display, officials said yesterday. The play “Oliver Twist” was interrupted and the children, aged 13-14, were evacuated from Zagreb’s Tresnja Theater when thick smoke filled the building on Tuesday, The HINA news agency cited a theater official as saying. Eleven children were taken to the hospital with breathing and eye problems, the hospital said. (AFP)